Few Solutions Offered As New Cheating Allegations, Rumors Roil Contest Ranks

By Jamie Dupree NS3T, radio-sport.net 

The dictionary defines the verb cheat in a straightforward manner: To act dishonestly, practice fraud; To violate rules deliberately, as in a game.

Whether cheating is actually worse now than 25 years ago in ham radio is hard to definitively know, but some high profile contesters believe more needs to be done about it.

"Contest organizers in general are not on top of this problem at all, but are slowly getting there," says Martti Laine OH2BH. He wants both individual contesters and contest sponsors to confront suspicious behavior.

"Private initiatives would not work alone," said Laine. "Some of them with the poorest ethical standards should be bluntly disqualified."

"Many of the younger contesters, such as ES5TV have publicly set off the alarm," Laine said.

Tonno Vahk ES5TV did "set off the alarm" last week, when he took the rare action of publicly accusing another contester of wrongdoing, in this case Valery Komarov RD3A/RD3AF.

In a detailed analysis of Komarov's 2006 CQWW CW log on the cq-contest reflector, Vahk laid out why he believed the Russian contester was actually using packet spots to find multipliers, while claiming to be unassisted.

In an interview with radio-sport.net, Vahk said "Yes, I am confident" about the analysis, which was first issued on the Russian Contest reflector. "There is so much more that I did not put into the posting," Vahk added.

Vahk used log and spot details to match when multipliers were spotted and when they were worked, not only by RD3A, but by other top European contesters as well.

"Out of the 209 mults that (RD3A) worked in the contest, 156 were recently spotted," wrote ES5TV.

"That is way more than any average non-assisted station and is a definite sign of using packet assistance!" said Vahk.

Emails to Komarov by radio-sport.net asking for comment went unanswered.

Vahk feels the future should include more public logs and more work by average contesters to root out any cheaters.

"We are developing much more automated software now and those things will be soon much easier to produce," says Vahk.

The rare episode of public accusations came amid rumors of more possible cheating in the aftermath of the 2007 CQWW CW contest.

"The email contest rumor mill has it that one of the top (potential) entries was caught red-handed cheating in the category two weeks ago by someone who walked in on his operation unannounced to find a 2nd operator present," wrote Scott Robbins W4PA, on his contesting blog.

"CQ WW CW seems to be plagued with the worst of the cheating allegations with a lot of finger pointing (some of it undoubtedly justified)" said Robbins.

In 2006, the CQWW committee disqualified Jack Danielyan RW3QC, the operator of C4M on Cyprus in the CW test.

"Log results deemed incompatible with category of entry," was the terse explanation in CQ Magazine.

That represented an unusual public notice, as often questionable logs are sometimes re-classified to a different category, or even "disappear" altogether from the final scores summary.

Some hams say such notices need to be better publicized in order to have a greater chilling effect on possible cheaters.

Some of that happened in the just released results of the EU HF Championships for 2007, as three stations were disqualified, including the above mentioned RD3A.

The explanation from the Slovenian Contest Club, like CQ Magazine's was short, but public.

RD3A was DQ'd for "excessive number of unverifiable QSO." (The list of those stations who were "not classified" and "disqualified" can be found at the SCC web site.

As for cheating allegations this year, efforts by radio-sport.net to confirm various charges produced interesting leads, but nothing that could made public for this story.

For some, that is the crux of the problem in the ham radio contest community.

"In the end, it appears that very few on (cq-contest) are interested in changing the status quo," wrote Eric Roseberg W3DQ.

"Instead, it seems that this whining, along with its "I know who the cheaters are but won't say" element, will continue from year to year," said Rosenberg.

With only the CQWW Contest Committee making logs public so far, Rosenberg urged hams to write the ARRL Contest Advisory Committee and the committees for CQ WPX and CQ 160 contests to request a similar move.

Earlier this year, the American Radio Relay League issued a rare public warning about cheating before the 2007 IARU Contest.

A statement on the ARRL website said that "leading competitors should expect their entries to be carefully scrutinized. If exceptional results are claimed, entrants must be prepared to explain how they were achieved."

The announcement said the IARU had asked the ARRL to "devote the necessary resources to maintain a high standard of adjudication."

As for remedies being advocated by contesters, other than public logs, some want to force top finishers to submit audio recordings of their contest operations and more.

"The technical means to do so is easy," wrote Robbins W4PA.

"The most commonly claimed abuse is the use of packet by Unassisted operators -- recordings will make this very easy to spot whether using one radio or two."